There and Back Again
by EAB84
Summary: When Jeremie is forced to leave to accept a scholarship in England, the Lyoko Warriors' fight against Xana goes on. But when a changed Jeremie returns not long after, how will the warriors react to their changed friend? UPDATE: The last chapter has a proposition to the Code Lyoko Fanfiction community, please take the time to read it.
1. Chapter 1: It Begins

**Hello, ladies and gentlemen.**

**This is a fanfiction that I have wanted to write for over a year, but I have not been able to bring together any ideas for its creation. Until now, that is.**

**I will attempt to update this story weekly, which should be entirely managable.**

**Thankyou,**

**EAO84**

**Edit (11/12/2014)**

**Please check the last chapter current posted, there is something that I would like other members of the community to consider.**

_Emergency Meeting_

_My room, now._

_J._

"What's up, Jeremie?" asked Odd as the group filed into Jeremie's room.

Jeremie waited until they were all seated.

"My father has secured me a scholarship to a school in England."

"WHAT!?" shouted Ulrich.

"But you aren't going to accept it, right?" asked Aelita.

Jeremie fidgeted uncomfortably.

"My father isn't giving me any choice."

"But isn't your father really nice? Didn't you try-"

"I've tried everything, Yumi; excuses, yelling, I even pretended to cry, he isn't budging."

The group fell into silence.

"So what are we going to do?"

"I don't know what to do," mumbled Jeremie, "My father has always been understanding in the past."

"Keep trying Einstein, you'll work your way out of it." smiled Odd, trying to keep their spirits up.

Jeremie's expression softened.

"You're right Odd, I'll find a way out."

"No means no, son."

"But dad!-"

"No buts, Jeremie, the academies are very prestigious schools and you'll never get an opportunity like this again, you are going to England and that's final!"

Jeremie hung the phone up dejectedly and opened the door to allow his friends back in.

He hadn't said anything, but he didn't need to, everyone could read the result of his phone call off of his face.

"What are we going to do?" asked Yumi.

Jeremie dropped his phone on his desk and rested his face in his hands.

He was silent for a few moments before raising his head.

Everyone looked at his expectantly.

"I've got nothing, I'm sorry guys."

"What if we asked him together?" asked Aelita, "Maybe if we showed him how many good friends you have here he'll reconsider."

"Except," Jeremie interjected, "He's already met all of you and he has already made it clear that this _is for the best_ and that its _for my future_, he isn't listening to me at all."

Aelita went silent, dejected.

"I don't know how I'm going to get myself out of this one."

**Two Weeks Later**

The day that the group had been dreading for the previous two weeks had come, the day of Jeremie's departure.

Jeremie's father arrived early, his Smart car was parked outside the gates of the school by 9am and he entered the school with Jim to collect his son.

At some point in the two weeks, Jeremie had simply given up his struggle against his father. The rest of the group had been trying to motivate him to fight it, but nothing had worked.

As Jim knocked on his door, Jeremie stood up from his bed, surrounded by his three years of time spent accumulating things at Kadic academy packed into two suitcases and a backpack.

"Are you ready, son?" asked Jeremie's father.

Jeremie nodded mutely, he felt numb.

"Let's go then."

The group followed Jeremie and his father as they made the short walk to the car and stood around as Jeremie loaded his bags, except for the backpack.

Jeremie stood solemnly before his friends as his father slid into his car and stared expectantly at Jeremie through the side window.

"You have all been the best friends that anyone could ask for, never in my life have I met anyone as kind and as selfless as you have all proven yourselves to be."

A tear slid from Jeremie's right eye as he opened his backpack.

"So I have got something for each of you, I hope that you will enjoy them."

Jeremie withdrew a black plastic case with an exposed LCD screen and some rough buttons set below it.

"For Odd, the complete Tetrix collection, on a device that I made myself, may it serve you well as you don't study for your exams."

Odd chuckled slightly and thanked Jeremie as he took it.

"For Ulrich, tutorials on every lesson between now and the end of next year, I hope that they will help you as you _start_ to study for your exams."

Ulrich grimaced slightly, but his face relaxed as he took them and he thanked Jeremie.

"For Yumi, I have this." he withdrew a beautiful, leather bound book with an intricate cherry blossom pattern on the cover.

"You have no idea how comforting it is to have a confidante, I hope that this diary will serve you well."

Jeremie reached into his bag and retrieved a final pair of items.

"And for Aelita, I have this, my laptop and all of my notes on Lyoko, you are an intelligent young lady and all the information is here for you to help you look for your father."

Aelita sobbed at the mention of her father, and enveloped Jeremie in a hug before crying into his shoulder. Jeremie shed a few more tears and returned her hug, free from awkwardness for the first time.

Jeremie slowly seperated himself from Aelita and gently pecked her on the cheek.

"Thankyou for all of the happiness that you have brought me."

Aelita didn't respond because of how heavily she was crying, but she returned the peck.

"Of course, I have also left you all a small surprise on Lyoko, as I won't be able to help you any more."

The group visibly stiffened at this.

"When will we see you next?" asked Yumi, struggling to keep a strong face.

"I don't know," replied Jeremie sadly, "I might be able to come back for holidays, but I'd only be able to stay at my parents house."

The group fell silent again.

"Well, it's time for me to go." said Jeremie sadly.

The group came together in a hug and did not let of go of Jeremie until he slid his way back to the car.

They all waved sadly as he departed and, as Jeremie's father's car crested a hill and disappeared from view, the group turned inwards so that the members could face each other.

"How can we manage without him?" asked Yumi, "He's always been there to take care of everything on Lyoko."

Aelita was still crying softly, but she raised Jeremie's laptop and looked Yumi in the eye.

"We're all going to have to work harder, me especially, but Jeremie knows that we can beat Xana, that's why he gave me this."

The members of the group looked to one another.

"We can do it, no problem."


	2. Chapter 2: Arrivals

Jeremie looked sullenly out of the window of the plane as it came in to land at Heathrow Airport. The flight hadn't been long, but the anguish of losing his closest friends was fresh in his mind and his thoughts were racing, but an overwhelming feeling of guilt over leaving his friends to face Xana swamped his other feelings.

The tyres screeched on the tarmac and the airplane gradually came to a halt before taxiing over to the terminal.

When Jeremie entered the terminal he spotted a young lady holding a sign with his name on it and the logo of the school that he was to attend at the top.

As Jeremie approached her, she gave a welcoming smile. The young lady was quite tall, even though she wasn't wearing heels and she had a shock of red hair trailing behind her.

"Welcome to London, Jeremie," she said with discomforting familiarity, "My name is Ms Volts and I've been sent to collect you, I'll also be teaching you chemistry at the Academy."

Jeremie nodded simply in response.

"Come on then, my car is parked just outside."

Jeremie sat through the entire car ride silently, despite Ms Volts attempts to get him to open up. He would cut off her conversation starters with simple, short sentences. He didn't feel like talking.

They traveled around the outside of London and followed the signs into the borough of Camden. The school came into view soon thereafter.

It was an enormous concrete and glass building at looked more like a government office than a school, the concrete over the entire building was left unpainted and it looked about as unwelcoming as a building could. Ms Volts brought the car to a stop in a large staff parking lot and turned to Jeremie.

"Collect your bags and I'll take you over to the Administration block."

The administration block was on the ground floor, and marked above the door with a large red "A", the entryway had a secretary sitting behind a desk and corridors running off to the left and right.

Ms Volts stepped up to the secretary.

"I have Jeremie Belpois here to see the principal."

The gentleman behind the desk looked up and gave another friendly smile.

"Of course, go on through."

The principals' office was at the end of the corridor on the left and the door was left open.

The principal himself was a very thin man who appeared to be in his late thirties.

The man looked up from the large stacks of paperwork as Jeremie entered by himself.

"Welcome to the Academy, Jeremie, my name is Mr Stevens."

"Hello sir." Jeremie replied as politely as he could.

"At the Academies we set a very high academic standard for our students, but as your previous results have proven, I'm sure that you will not find it so difficult.

Jeremie nodded absently.

"We have a 100% rate of university uptake and all of our student end up in one of the world's top 2% of universities."

Mr Stevens had said this with considerable pride, but Jeremie didn't really care.

Failing to see any reaction from Jeremie, Mr Stevens continued.

"Our students go on to become leaders in the worlds of Mathematics, Information Technology and the Sciences, but I'm sure that you know all of that already."

"Yes, sir." Jeremie replied.

"I've called for some students that will be living in the dormitory next to you to show you to your dormitory room and to show you around the school afterwards, I do hope that you enjoy your time here and if you ever have any questions, I'm right here."

"Thankyou, sir." Jeremie said.

Jeremie stepped back into the hall as a pair of unfamiliar faces stepped into the administration room and walked over to the secretary.

The two were boys, one was around two inches shorter than the other but they were obviously related. They both had matching messy brown hair that just did not violate the school's relatively lax uniform policy and dull green eyes. They were also both wearing black t-shirts under their white pinstripe uniform shirts so that the names of the bands on the shirts were clearly visible.

"Hello," said the taller of the boys with surprising courtesy, "The principal asked us to show a new student around."

This boy spoke with a strange accent, a pronounced drawl that sounded out of place in an upper tier English boarding school.

"He's speaking to the principal at the moment..." began the secretary as he turned to look down the corridor.

Jeremie stepped out into the hallway at this instant and the secretary stopped.

"Here he is now, boys."

The two boys changed their focus and walked down the corridor towards Jeremie. The taller of the two seized one of Jeremie's suitcases and the younger seized the other one.

"Follow us," said the younger of the two.

He also possessed the same strange accent, but it was much less pronounced than that of his brother.

The two brothers led Jeremie out into the wide main corridor and led him off towards the elevator at the far end.

"I'm Louis," the taller of the two said, pronouncing it Lou-wee.

"I'm James," followed the shorter one.

"I'm Jeremie," replied Jeremie in suit.

"Sooooo..." said Louis, "Where are you from?"

"France," replied Jeremie shortly, "You?"

"We're from Australia," replied James, "Lived there for ages."

"And how did you end up here?"

"Distinguished ourselves," said James proudly, "Louis found a talent for IT and I found one for Chemistry."

Their conversation was terminated by the arrival of the elevator and the boys piling in.

"How about you, what's your talent?"

"Information Technology, I suppose."

Louis smiled at this.

"It's nice to have a fellow IT major on hand, most of the kids on our floor are Sciences, and all of those physics majors drive me mad with their formulas and their studying until 4 in the morning."

"What do you mean majors?" asked Jeremie.

Louis and James both looked taken aback at this.

"Didn't anyone tell you? We all get assigned majors."

"No?" replied Jeremie.

"It's just like university," said Louis simply, "But instead of choosing which major you want to do, they put you in one based on your grades and you do extra classes and work for your major and less for all of your minors."

"Unless you're really smart," continued James, "In which case you can choose which major you want to do, but there are only a few kids like that at the school, you'll meet one of them when she gets back to the dorm this afternoon."

The elevator dinged as it reached the eighth floor of the building and the door opened into a large, glass fronted common room.

"This is the common room," said Louis as they cut across it towards a corridor on the opposing wall. "If there are going to be any parties or whole floor events, this is where they'll happen."

They passed through a doorway at the other end into a corridor with plain white walls and rooms every 6 or so metres.

"These are the dorm rooms." said Louis, "We're at full capacity presently, and I'm sure that you'll get to meet plenty of the other kids as soon as classes finish for the day."

"When do classes finish?" asked Jeremie.

"In about 20 minutes, someone will probably bring you a timetable at dinner tonight."

They walked down to the final door of the corridor and Louis removed a key from his pocket and unlocked the door before passing the key to Jeremie.

"And here we are, your room."

Jeremie turned the handle and pushed the door open. The room beyond wasn't unlike his room at Kadic academy, save for the white colour scheme and the fact that the view from the window showed a wide area of asphalt and an athletics track to the left.

Louis and James pushed Jeremie's suitcases up against his bed.

"We've both got some assignments to work on, but if you have any questions feel free to ask, I'm across the hall and James is first door on your right."

"Yeah," Jeremie said quietly, "Thanks for showing me to my room."

"No problem," replied both of the boys simultaneously, "See you later."

Jeremie sat down on his bed and rolled over on the white sheets to rest his head on the pillow and take in his new situation.

The boys seemed nice enough, but Jeremie had never been good at making friends and a new school was his worst nightmare. Then again, the Academy didn't seem like the kind of school where students were bullied for being intelligent. Jeremie pulled his phone out of his pocket and typed a quick text.

_I've arrived._

_J_.

He sent the text for Aelita before dropping his phone onto his bed and sitting up again.

"Well, I may as well get unpacked."


	3. Chapter 3: Settling In

A sharp knock was struck on Jeremie's door at 6pm, he had unpacked most of his things but was yet to leave his room.

"Come in," he said.

The door opened to reveal Louis, this time out of uniform and wearing a black cut off shirt with blue jeans and sneakers.

"Hey, James and I are going down to Dinner, do you want to come down with us? We'll introduce you to everyone."

Jeremie weighed up his options for a moment before deciding that being cordial was most likely the best choice.

"Sure thing, just give me a moment."

Louis nodded and closed the door.

Jeremie's phone buzzed as the door closed and he retrieved it from where he had dropped it 3 hours earlier.

_Missing you already._

_A, Y, U, O_

Jeremie chuckled slightly. "Well if you can't handle me being away for two days, how are you going to handle three months?"

Jeremie glanced at the text one more time before closing it and sliding his phone back into his pocket and leaving the room to go to dinner with Louis and James.

The school's refectory was full of white décor much like the rest of the building, white tables, white chairs and a white serving counter. Behind the counter stood a smiling lady with a pot of something that smelled delicious, pouring out individual portions for the students. Jeremie, Louis and James all collected trays and a serving of whatever smelled good before walking together to a table that greeted the boys cheerfully.

"Jeremie, this is the table that most of the people from the eighth floor sit at."

The people sitting around the table variously waved or said hello and Jeremie replied in turn as Louis introduced him to everyone around the table.

Until they got to the last young lady at the table.

"And this," said Louis grandiosely, "Is Irina, the young lady that I was telling you about before."

Irina was utterly beautiful, she had flawless white skin, perfectly held black hair and a piercing blue-eyed stare.

Jeremie found herself struck by her beauty, even though he had long been convinced of his love for Aelita.

"Hello," she said quietly.

"Nice to meet you," replied Jeremie.

She smiled softly. "You too."

"Irina here is probably the most intelligent young lady here," said James, "She had the opportunity to pick from Information Technology, any of the three sciences or mathematics."

"And what did you pick?" asked Jeremie.

"Physics," she replied.

James smiled ruefully, "She leaves the rest of the physics class in the dust, isn't that right?" he asked, directing his question to the physics majors sitting around the table.

The awkward half-denials showed Jeremie that they were correct.

"Anyway," interrupted Louis, "Are we here to talk or are we here to eat?"

"Both, technically," said James.

Louis gave his brother a flat stare.

"Anyway!" said James, "Let's eat."

The rest of dinner past with little commotion, the people around the table were friendly and asked small questions about Jeremie to learn more about him and he responded in turn.

It was becoming one of the easiest attempts at making friends that he had ever made.

As dinner drew to a close at 7:30pm, a teacher entered the dining hall and made a beeline for Jeremie.

When the teacher arrived, he presented Jeremie with a printed timetable.

"Your classes start tomorrow, at 9am sharp."

With that, he turned and left the room.

"Tough break," said Eloise, who Jeremie had been introduced to, "Usually they give you a couple of days to adjust before getting into classes."

Jeremie glanced at the timetable, classes began at 9am and ran through until 3:40pm, then there was free time until dinner started at 6. After dinner there seemed to be more free time, but through the chatter and complaints of students around the table, it seemed that most of them used the time to work on homework or their assignments.

"Hey, Jeremie" said Louis, shaking Jeremie out of his concentration, "We're planning on having a little welcome party for you tonight."

Other people around the table made sounds of approval.

"There's no need to go that far..." said Jeremie, embarassed.

"Don't be silly," said Louis, "It's no trouble, we're all just looking to get a night off of schoolwork."

Surrounded by kind people, Jeremie smiled, "Then I'd love to."

"That's more like it!" said James, "We'll see if we can rustle up some snacks from the catering staff..."

**9pm**

The party managed to remain quite strong for the hour and a half following dinner, but eventually most people that had already eaten dinner called it quits and said good night to Jeremie before returning to their rooms. James, however, was still going strong after almost an entire bag of potato chips. Louis came over to Jeremie as the last of the people parted ways and returned to their rooms for the night, leaving James with three more bags of potato chips and several packets of chocolate biscuits to finish by himself.

"How did you find it?" asked Louis.

"It was great," replied Jeremie, smiling, "It's been a long time since I've had that much fun."

Louis smiled back and turned to face the hallway down which their rooms lay.

"I'm glad, but we should probably get back to our rooms soon, lights out is at 10. James! That's enough."

James turned to face his taller brother with a mouthful of chocolate biscuits, but he quickly chewed and swallowed the food before scooping up the remnants of the food and moving them to the common room's fridge and cupboard.

"See you tomorrow, Jeremie," said Louis, waving a hand vaguely as he and James walked back down the hallway.

Jeremie held his hand up in response and followed soon after, walking down to the final room and using his key to unlock the door.

Behind the door of his room was a door that led into a small ensuite with a shower and a toilet, so he took a long shower and lay down on the bed. He shifted uncomfortably as he felt his phone through the fabric of his pants and immediately felt guilty as he remembered the text message from Aelita and the fact that he had not even considered his friends since he had read the text message hours earlier.

_Settling in well._

_Made plenty of friends already._

_Jeremie_.

Jeremie struck the final character and sent the message to his father.


	4. Chapter 4: The Return

**Six months later**

The sixth months between Jeremie's departure and return had not treated Aelita Schaeffer well.

XANA's attacks had become more frequent than ever and the Lyoko warriors would often spend the entire night into the early hours of the morning attempting to prevent whatever catastrophe XANA was attempting to enact.

Aelita had been forced to return to using the Return to the Past function in order to give the rest of the Lyoko Warriors adequate sleep, but she worked just as hard as Jeremie had in the past, trading sleep for progress in the fight against XANA.

Aelita's usually carefully chaotic hair was unkempt and disorganized, she was wearing the same clothing that she had for the previous three days and she had dark rings under her eyes as she trudged through the school grounds towards first period Mathematics.

It was at that point that something from the edge of her vision caught her eye.

She turned towards the front gate to see a familiar face walking down the gravel path towards school.

Though he had certainly changed, the boy was unmistakably Jeremie, he had traded his glasses for a smaller, trendier pair and his previous wardrobe for cutoff shirts and jeans.

Aelita just stared at him in incomprehension as he completely missed her and walked towards the school's administration block.

Aelita was so shocked by Jeremie's return that she completely forgot to call out to him.

As he disappeared behind the administration building, Aelita recovered enough to grab her cell phone and send a quick text to the rest of the group.

_Jeremie is back,_

_I just saw him going to see Mr Delmas._

_A._

"Welcome back, Jeremie, It's good to see you again." said Mr Delmas as he stared over the rim of his glasses at Jeremie.

"You too sir, I look forward to getting back into it." smiled Jeremie.

"Your old room has remained unused since you left, so I hope that you won't mind moving back into the same room."

"Not at all, sir."

Mr Delmas nodded, satisfied.

"I'll have Jim come and help you with your bags."

"Thankyou, sir."

Jeremie's return to school prompted an uproar and people that he had never really considered very good friends came up to welcome him back through the day. By the time that classes had finished at Midday, Jeremie was worn out from all of the interaction and he returned to his old dorm room to unpack and to get reacquainted with his old school.

As Jeremie sat down on his bed and glanced at the clock above his bed, a quiet knock struck his door.

"Come in," said Jeremie.  
>The door opened to reveal the Lyoko Warriors and they all followed Aelita into Jeremie's room.<p>

Aelita was the first to speak.

"Welcome back!" she said happily, smiling with the first real emotion that she'd expressed in months.

Jeremie smiled.

"Thanks, its good to be back."

Upon closer inspection, Jeremie had changed physically as well, there was visible muscle definition in his arms that were exposed by his cut off shirt and he seemed much fitter than he had six months earlier.

Odd, Ulrich and Yumi all greeted Jeremie as well and, after some initial small talk, the discussion shifted to Jeremie's return.

"So what are you doing back so early?" asked Odd.

Jeremie squirmed slightly.

"I'd really rather not talk about it, the school threw me out."

Ulrich adopted a disbelieving expression.

"You're kidding me, right? The great Einstein thrown out of a school?"

"Yeah, my father was furious, I had to practically beg him to get him to send me back here."

The group fell silent.

"Well, what matters is that you're back," summarized Aelita.

Jeremie smiled weakly.

"Yeah... Anyway I'm really tired from the flight and I've still got to get everything unpacked, so I'll see you all later?"

The Lyoko Warriors were surprised by the brush off.

"Don't you want to ask us anything?"

"Nope, that's everything for the moment."

Aelita looked shellshocked as Yumi led the Lyoko Warriors out of Jeremie's room.

"He sure has changed, hasn't he?"

As soon as they had left, Jeremie fished into his pocket to remove his phone. This one was a new model with a flat glass screen taking up most of the phone and a white backer.

There was only one number in the phone's contacts under "I" and he quickly pressed the number and raised the phone to his ear.

The phone rung three times.

"Hello?" said a soft voice.

"Hey, how are you?" Jeremie said softly.

"Good," replied the voice simply, "Did you make it back safely?"

Jeremie smiled at the sound of her voice.

"Yes, made it back safe and sound."

"I'm glad."

Their sedate conversation was interrupted when a loud voice with a familiar accent called from the other end of the phone.

"Is that him?" shouted Louis.

There was a brief scuffle on the phone as it was passed around.

"Hey, Jeremie!" said Louis, "How are ya?"

"Fine, Louis, thanks."

"I can't believe that you dropped out on such short notice."

"I didn't drop out, I got thrown out."

"Dropped out, got thrown out, same difference."

"Hey Jeremie!" interrupted James.

"Hey," replied Jeremie again, "Can you put Irina back on, please?"

There was another scuffle as the phone was passed back to Irina.

"So, what now?" she asked.

"I'll get as settled in as possible, and I'll try to come and see you as soon as I can."

"I'd like that."

"Anyway, I'd better go now."

"Bye," said Irina softly.

"Yeah, bye."


	5. Chapter 5: Acceptance

**3am**

Aelita's phone and Jeremie's old laptop both buzzed in unison.

Aelita's face was resting on the keyboard, so the buzzing immediately roused her from her sleep and caused her to sleepily raise her head to look at the screen.

A familiar screen was showing, with a highlighted tower and the symbol of XANA glowing beside it.

XANA was attacking.

Aelita cancelled the alarm and grabbed her phone, quickly dialing Ulrich's number as she did so.

Ulrich picked up after 7 rings.

"What is it, princess?" asked Ulrich sleepily.

"XANA is attacking, get Odd and Yumi and come to the factory quickly."

"What about Jeremie?" asked Ulrich, now wide awake.

"I'll go and get him."

"Okay princess, see you there."

Aelita knocked gently on Jeremie's door.

"Who is it?" asked Jeremie, confused, "Do you know what time it is?"

"It's me," replied Aelita, "Xana's attacking."

Jeremie stared at her blankly.

"So?"

"So, we need your help, come on."

Jeremie took a pained expression.

"I can't."

"What do you mean, you can't?" asked Aelita, starting to lose her patience.

"This isn't my problem any more?" said Jeremie quietly, "I just can't."

Aelita's expression hardened.

"What happened to fighting XANA being 'our job,' Jeremie?"

"Times change."

Aelita stood in the doorway for a moment with an incredulous look on her face, then her expression hardened again.

"Fine," she said bitterly, slamming the door behind her.

Jeremie exhaled as she left.

Aelita breathed heavily as she came to the entrance to the sewer with Odd, Yumi and Ulrich standing around it.

"Where's Jeremie?" asked Yumi.

"I'll tell you later." snapped Aelita.

Aelita led the way down the manhole.

Yumi turned to Odd.

"_What do you think happened between them?"_ she asked with her eyes.

Odd shrugged.

After a few moments silence, they followed Aelita down into the sewer.

**Four Hours later**

A beautiful golden disc was ascending over the suburbs and there was a slight chill in the air as the Lyoko Warriors left the factory, having held off XANA's assault for now.

Though the warriors would usually be chatting happily, they had each had less that 4 hours sleep and were not in the talking mood.

Ulrich, Yumi and Odd were quietly walking side by side behind Aelita, who was visibly seething.

During the mission to Lyoko, Aelita had been almost entirely silent, only speaking when the mission was complete and when she had decided not to initiate a return to the past, as Xana's attack had done no damage in the real world.

The silence persisted as the walked through Kadic town towards the school.

When the arrived, Aelita left wordlessly and returned to her dorm room, holding one hand over her head in farewell.

The other three warriors said goodbye to one another and returned to their dorms. Yumi ran back to her house and made it just in time for her mother to knock on her door to wake her up.

"Good morning, Yumi," her mother said brightly, "Did you sleep well?"

"Not exactly."

**Meanwhile**

Jeremie's alarm sounded at 7:00am, rousing him from his sleep.

The boy sat up and rubbed his eyes with the back of one hand.

He glanced around the room and was disoriented for a moment.

_Where am I?_

His mind took over and reminded him that he was at Kadic academy again.

Jeremie dragged himself out of bed and grasped his phone, which was charging on the left end of his desk and unlocked it.

An icon in the upper left indicated that he had a message.

It was from his father.

_Jeremie,_

_I hope that you are settling back in well and that your friends are well._

_But if you ever do what you did at the Academy again, explusion is going to be the least of your worries._

_Dad._

Jeremie read through the message twice before deleting it without bothering to respond.

Ever since the incident that got him thrown out of the Academy, his father had been incredibly hostile. Both himself and Irina had defended themselves but neither the school's authority nor their parents had wanted to hear it. Irina, being the talented student that she was, was warned and punished, but not forced to leave.

Jeremie was putting his phone down when two sharp knocks struck his door.

"It's open," he said, without thinking.

Ulrich opened the door to reveal himself and Odd, both looked disheveled and both had dark rings under their eyes.

"What happened between you and Aelita, Jeremie?" asked Ulrich.

"Nothing, nothing at all."

Odd smirked.

"Are you sure about that, Einstein?"

Jeremie flinched slightly at his nickname.

"Why didn't you come to factory?" continued Ulrich.

"I told Aelita that I'm not going to fight against Xana any more."

Ulrich and Odds' eyes widened.

"What!?" they both said simultaneously.

Jeremie sighed and lowered his gaze.

"I can't fight against Xana any more."

"Why not?" asked Odd indignantly.

"It's complicated..." said Jeremie, squirming uncomfortably under his friends' questions.

Ulrich looked angry.

"I don't care what your reason is, its not good enough."

Jeremie looked at the floor.

"Jeremie, you dragged us into this, and you can't just decide that you are out, all of a sudden."

"Ulrich-" Jeremie began.

"I don't want to hear it!" snapped Ulrich angrily, "Go and apologize to Aelita."

A tear fell from Jeremie's face.

Ulrich's expression softened.

"I never meant for it to turn out like this," muttered Jeremie, sounding as if he was holding back sobs. "I never intended for the fight against XANA to turn into something that we would have to do for this long."

"Jeremie," Ulrich said, more gently this time, "Why can't you fight against XANA any more?"

Jeremie looked up and slipped his glasses off to wipe his eyes.

"I'm scared, Ulrich," replied Jeremie, "More scared than I've ever been before. I thought that the Academy was my chance to escape from XANA, once and for all."

Odd smiled.

"You make it sound like we _can't_ beat XANA or something."

"Can we?" asked Jeremie uncertainly.

Ulrich and Odd smiled simultaneously and each slapped a hand onto one of Jeremie's shoulders.

"Of course we can," the both said at the same time, with absolute certainty, "Xana doesn't stand a chance."

Jeremie smiled slightly, it was only a small smile, but it was a start.

"Let's go see Aelita."


	6. Chapter 6: Rejection

Aelita, as it turned out, was where she had been for the bulk of every day since Jeremie had left, in her room, hunched over Jeremie's computer, rapidly programming as she tried to come up with a new way in which XANA might be defeated.

Two sharp knocks struck the door, it was Ulrich.

"Come in," said Aelita impatiently.

Ulrich opened the door to reveal the group of three.

Aelita turned to face them, saw Jeremie and turned back to Jeremie old laptop.

"What do you want?"

"Jeremie has something to say." said Odd, nudging the boy with his elbow.

"Aelita," said Jeremie, "I'm sorry for what I said, you're right, we need to fight against XANA together."

Aelita snorted quietly.

"What I need right now is for you to stop distracting me."

Jeremie persisted.

"Aelita, I was wrong to try and avoid helping you all, you're the best friends I've ever had, all of you."

Aelita didn't look up, she just drummed her index finger next to the computer's touchpad.

"Are you done?"

It was Jeremie's turn to look shocked.

"Aelita, why are you acting like this?"

Aelita sighed.

"Just leave, please, I'm far behind as it is."

Odd touched him on the shoulder and gestured that it was probebly best that they left.

Jeremie turned back to face Aelita once more.

"I'm sorry," he said finally, bowing his head.

The trio left without any further acknowledgment from Aelita and they turned left down the hallway towards the stairs.

"Well, that could have gone better." said Jeremie miserably.

"If you think that was bad, you should have seen her in the first few weeks after you left."

"What happened?"

Ulrich picked up the story.

"For the first week after you left Aelita got permission to stay at Yumi's house, Yumi said that Aelita would wake her up at 2 and 3 am, crying."

Jeremie immediately felt guilty.

"After the first week Mr Delmas made Aelita come back and stay in the dorms, she snuck into your room a few times, Jim caught her in there and she ended up doing a couple of 2 hour detentions."

"I don't think I saw her touch her DJ stuff once." remarked Odd.

"What happened then?"

"The month after that, Aelita became obsessed with finding a way to beat XANA, she turned into the old version of you, staying up to all hours of the night looking for some new strategy to beat XANA."

"Shit..." muttered Jeremie.

"Eventually she just stopped sleeping, she even stopped eating for a couple of days and we had to drag her down to the cafeteria to make her eat."

"I had no idea..."

"I'm sure you've noticed, Jeremie, but you leaving changed Aelita, and I don't think that she's going to change back to easily."

"What am I supposed to do?"

"Time will probably help, apart from that you should probably try and help her as much as possible, convince her that you are really serious about going back to fighting XANA."

"And in the meantime?"

"Let's just say that Aelita is probably going to be less than cordial with you for a while."

The group sat in the cafeteria for lunch until Yumi arrived, Aelita didn't turn up for the duration of the meal and, near the end, Yumi collected a tray and a few items for her.

"I'll take these up to her room," said Yumi, standing to leave.

"No need," said Odd, gesturing to the door.

As tired and worn down as Aelita had looked in the half-light of her room, in the light of day she looked _much_ older.

Her face was lined like an adult's and she walked with a weary slump that was obvious to see.

"No sleep again, princess?" asked Odd.

Aelita looked at him through hooded, tired eyes.

"Not while XANA is still out there."

"You still have to sleep, Aelita." said Yumi.

Aelita nodded dismissively and took the tray from Yumi without sitting down.

"Thanks, Yumi," Aelita said, giving her what now equated to a smile.

Aelita returned the tray to the cafeteria counter and removed the food from it before immediately leaving to go to class.

"Does she always act like that at breakfast?" asked Jeremie.

"Usually she doesn't come to breakfast. What class do you have first?"

Jeremie extracted his new timetable from his satchel.

"Mathematics,"

Ulrich made a face.

"It won't be an enjoyable experience."

"Why not?"

"Aelita is in your maths class."

"Oh..."

"Yeah."

Jeremie's maths class turned out to be Mrs Meyer's class, the same class the Jeremie had been in before he changed schools, Mrs Meyer started the class by welcoming him back before getting into the lesson content.

Her teaching style had never suited Jeremie and the fact that his progress at the Academy had put him far ahead of what she was teaching didn't help.

Jeremie snuck a glance at Aelita halfway through the class, not that he needed to.

She was completely oblivious to the class and anyone in it, spending all of her time scribbling notes into a book that he had never seen before.

Jeremie turned his attention back to Mrs Meyer, but the comparatively easy content failed to make any impression upon him because he already knew all of the answers, within another 10 minutes he was doodling in the margin of his maths book.

The instant the bell rang he was on his feet and ready to leave the room.

"Remember, everyone, your homework is to do pages 268 to 290 of the textbook, I'll be checking it in class tomorrow."

Other students in the class varyingly put books away or slowly moved to leave the room, but Jeremie was already out the door, closely followed by Aelita, who completely ignored him and walked on to her next lesson.

Jeremie sighed.

_This is going to be difficult._

**That Evening**

The sun was sinking in the sky and bathing the Parisian suburbs in a soft orange light as Jeremie stood on the athletics field in a black cutoff shirt with dark grey trackpants. He'd asked both Odd and Ulrich if they wanted to run with him and when they'd gotten over the shock, Ulrich had stated that he had to practice Pencak Silat with Yumi and Odd had said that he was going on a date with a "young lady" from the year above, in Jeremie's absence Odd had apparently run out of year 9 girls to date and he had been forced to look elsewhere.

Jeremie gently stretched on the tarmac before kneeling down and taking a starters position on the track.

Jeremie had discovered many things in his time at the Academy, firstly that sports were not the miserable experience that he had always thought them to be, at least solitary sports like running weren't. He had picked up running in his first week because of the Academy's compulsory sport program and he had grown much fitter in the interluding six months.

He ran around the track until he had traveled at least 3 miles and then returned to the dorms to shower before dinner.

There was a familiar cracking sound as he past Ulrich and Odd's room on the way to his own and he was almost bowled over by an unfamiliar girl with short blonde hair and a seriously short shirt that revealed her toned stomach.

"Pig," she muttered as she brushed past Jeremie and walked down the hallway towards the stairs.

Jeremie ducked his head into the room to see Odd sitting on the floor absently patting Kiwi's back.

"What happened, Odd?"

"Huh?" said Odd, snapping out of his stupor, "Oh, nothing."

Jeremie took one look at Odd's face and immediately decided that it was not nothing.

"Whatever you say, Odd." said Jeremie, smiling.

"Wanna get some dinner?" asked Odd.

"Sure, just give me a minute."


	7. Chapter 7: Attack

**Meanwhile, in Aelita's room**

In the wiring of Aelita's room, a specter of XANA congealed into a shadowy patch. The shadow raced along the wiring and crawled it's way through a power point into the room, its electric body cracking the plastic as it did.

Aelita herself was slumped over her computer, having succumbed to the exhaustion of a sleepless night and a relentless day of school.

The specter formed into a human shape and attempted to enter her body by dissolving into a mist and allowing itself to be inhaled by the sleeping girl. The specter gradually disappeared into her body until no more of it was present in the room. Inside her head the specter attempted to latch onto her brain so that it could control her, but it received a sharp rebuke in the form of a powerful electric shock that scattered the specter and caused Aelita herself to spasm as her body rejected the control of the specter. She opened her eyes reflexively and caught a glimpse of the specter as it fled away from her and escaped back into the schools' power grid.

The instant the specter was gone, Aelita's hand was at her mobile and she was scrolling through the contacts to find Odd.

Odd's phone rang in a generic manner as he patted Kiwi.

"Hello?" he asked.

"Odd, it's me."

"XANA's attacking?" concluded Odd.

"Yes, can you get Ulrich and Yumi?"

"Sure thing, how about Jeremie?"

Aelita paused.

"Don't bother." she snapped, hanging up.

"It's not good to be so dishonest with yourself, Princess," chided Odd and he slid his phone back into his pocket and stood.

"Be a good boy, Kiwi," he said, giving Kiwi a final pat and leaving the room.

Odd, Ulrich, Yumi and Jeremie jogged across the bridge that connected the city with the factory and they all swung down to the ground floor with the metal cables affixed to the roof. The group landed with varying degrees of grace and they remained silent as they crossed the building and entered the elevator. Yumi entered the code to unlock the lab's door and the group walked into the cavernous room that housed the Supercomputer's terminal.

Aelita sat proudly in the spot that had formerly been Jeremie's and she didn't even acknowledge Jeremie's presence.

"It looks like tower 3 in the ice sector is activated, a spectre tried to attack me before but I've been checking the news and it looks like XANA's plan is confined to that."

"Someone has to stay here to look after Aelita," said Yumi.

"I will," said Jeremie, "I can't go to Lyoko, anyway."

Aelita acknowledged his presence through a cold glare and then returned her eyes to the computer screen.

"Go downstairs, I'll virtualize you."

Odd, Yumi and Ulrich departed in the elevator and, after a momentary pause, Ulrich's voice came over the loudspeaker of the back of the computer.

"We're in position, Aelita."

"Transferring you now."

Aelita dispensed with Jeremie's "Transfer, Scanner, Virtualization" routine and silently typed the codes needed for materialization into the machine.

"Is there anything that you'd like me to do, anything I can do to help?" asked Jeremie.

Aelita didn't look at him.

"Do whatever you want."

Jeremie felt a pang of anger.

"What I want to do is help, what can I do to help?"

Aelita sighed.

"Get y-, _my_ laptop out of my bag and bring it over here."

Jeremie did so.

"Open it up and look for a folder called "Programs-L."

Jeremie opened the folder and was presented with a long list of programs, none of which he recalled from his time working on the supercomputer.

"Near the bottom there should be a file called 'vehicle-upgrades.h.'"

Jeremie scrolled down to the files and opened it, it was filled with a familiar jumble of code written in Waldo Schaeffer's Hoppix programming language.

"Plug it into the supercomputer," she said, waving vaguely towards the bundle of wires at the back of the computer. Over her shoulder, Jeremie could see that Odd, Yumi and Ulrich were facing off against two megatanks and two krabs.

He walked to the back of the monitor and fumbled around with the cables for a moment until he found the one that he had patched to be compatible with the much more recent technology of his laptop, he connected the cable.

"Okay, that's it." said Aelita, omitting to thank him.

Jeremie walked back around to the side of the terminal.

It was then that Jeremie got the first good look at her in the just over sixth month period of their seperation.

Unlike the young lady that he had left behind, Aelita seemed much older than her 13 years, her face was set in a concentrated grimace as she glared at the screen and her face had thinned slightly from the neglect that he had also inflicted upon himself during his time as the Lyoko Warrior's operator.

Aelita broke his concentration by saying something to the warriors on Lyoko.

"Nicely done, Yumi, only one more krab to go."

_Wait, one more krab?_

Aelita spoke to him without looking.

"I made some upgrades to our weaponry after you left." she said, with a cold edge asserting itself in her voice.

Jeremie couldn't think of any way to reply, so he didn't.

"The path is clear, princess, we're ready for you." said Odd over the loudspeaker.

Aelita switched from monitoring the scrolling lines of diagnostic text on the screen to rapidly typing a familiar program to Jeremie.

"I'll be with you in a little while." said Aelita, removing the headset and placing it on the chair's armrest.

Aelita stood, glanced at Jeremie and then walked over to the elevator before going down a level to the scanner room.

The delayed virtualization timer counted down more rapidly as it approached zero until the hydraulic hissing of the scanner doors closing rang out in the computer room and Aelita's wireframe portrait appeared on the monitor.

Without any monsters guarding the activated tower, it was an easy run and less than five minutes before the tower was deactivated.

"There's no point in launching a return to the past, I'll devirtualize us." said Aelita.

"Wait, allow me." said Jeremie as he sat down in the operator's chair.

Aelita didn't respond to Jeremie, but he didn't give her a chance to snap anything at him, his fingers flew over the keyboard with practiced ease and devirtualized the warriors in pairs, Yumi and Aelita first, then Ulrich and Odd.

The four warriors chatted idly as the elevator ascended to the computer lab and Jeremie joined them in the elevator.

"Nice job, everyone," said Aelita, in a tone that Jeremie himself had used post-mission, "XANA didn't stand a chance."

"And with any luck," added Ulrich, "He'll give us a little break, that's three attacks this week."

Jeremie looked at the floor as the elevator opened out onto the main floor of the factory.

The first touches of the early morning sunlight against the dark blue ocean of the sky were visible through the portal that led back onto the bridge and the warriors grew silent as they finally emerged into the pre-dawn air.

_Well,_ thought Jeremie, _That could have gone better_.


	8. Chapter 8: Bitterness

**Two days later**

The two days following XANA's attack were everything that Ulrich had hoped for, silent for schoolwork and devoid of XANA attacks. Aelita found herself once again awake at 6:30 in the morning, having worked all night on a modification to Lyoko.

A sharp, characteristic knock struck the door.

"Come in, Ulrich," she said.

"It's scary that you can tell who it is by their knock."

Aelita smiled mirthlessly.

"Anyway, did you get any sleep?"

Aelita answer the question by turning to face Ulrich fully, she was wearing her nightshirt, which meant that she had (uncharacteristically) planned to go to bed, but she was still wearing her boots from the previous day and it was clear that she hadn't slept from the distant look in her eyes.

"That's a no, then." said Ulrich, flatly.

Aelita shook her head, exhausted.

"Go to bed," said Ulrich soothingly, "Odd and I will cover for you in Gym, after that we'll tell your teachers that Yolanda sent you to bed."

Aelita turned back to face her computer, but Ulrich intervened and closed it.

"Bed, princess."

Aelita looked slightly put out, but she did lift herself out of the chair, pull her boots and socks over her feet and lay down under her covers.

"I'll ask Yumi to come and check on you this afternoon."

"Thankyou, Ulrich." said Aelita.

Ulrich smiled.

"No problem."

**In Gym**

"Aelita isn't feeling well, Jim, she went to the infirmary."

Jim raised an eyebrow.

"Yeah," said Odd, following on from Ulrich, "She looked really ill this morning."

Jim lowered his eyebrow again and moved on to speaking about the "finer points" of athletics for the upcoming school competition.

"Is she really not feeling well?" murmered Jeremie to Ulrich.

"She was a mess when I went to see her in her room this morning, looks like she didn't get any sleep again."

_Again?_

"She's just like you were Jeremie, staying up to all hours of the night working on some brilliant new plan."

Jeremie cringed slightly as he realized that this was _exactly_ how he had behaved, skipping meals and classes to work on a number of programs, none of which had ended up being any use against XANA.

"Belpois!" said Jim loudly, "As you are newly returned, how about you perform the long jump first?"

Jeremie, during his previous tenure at Kadic academy had skipped all of the gym classes that he could manage to and concocted schemes to get out of many more, but his time at the Academy had changed his fitness and he stood confidently in his black cut off and brand-named sports shorts as he took a spot at the starting mark.

"Go!" said Jim.

Jeremie took off running down the short stretch before rolling forward on his feet and leaping a respectable distance through the air before crashing down near the far end of the sand pit.

Another student stretched a plastic tape measure out to the place where his heels had connected and wrote down the score.

"Holy Toledo, Belpois," said Jim.

Jeremie smiled slightly as he took his place beside his dumbstruck friends.

Odd turned to him, his mouth open wide.

"How?"

Jeremie shrugged.

"Della Robbia, you're next."

**That Afternoon, after school**

A gentle knock struck Aelita's door.

"Come in, Yumi."

Yumi opened the door and stepped into Aelita's room to find her sitting at her computer again.

"Aelita, how much sleep did you get?"

"Plenty," replied Aelita simply, her hands not stopping their typing.

"How much?" said Yumi again, with less patience.

"4 or 5 hours."

Yumi opened her mouth to lecture Aelita, but remembered that it wouldn't work and closed her mouth just as quickly.

"I think I've found a way to beat XANA."

"You say that every day."

"Yes, but I know that I can do it this time."

Yumi paused.

"Have you thought of asking Jeremie to help you? It would take some of the stress off of you."

Aelita looked at her icily.

"Jeremie made his position clear." she said, a clear edge on her voice.

Yumi's expression tightened.

"And what about when we were on Lyoko?"

Aelita paused.

"That is irrelevant."

Yumi sighed.

"Sooner or later you are going to have to deal with him."

"Why is everyone so insistent of lecturing me about this?" asked Aelita angrily, "Jeremie left the school, leaving us to fight XANA by ourselves and now he thinks that he can just reappear and act as if nothing happened?"

"Princess, bitterness doesn't suit you."

Aelita glared at Yumi.

Yumi sighed.

"I'm going to go now, _please_ get enough sleep tonight, Princess."

Aelita didn't say anything as Yumi left, closing the door behind her.

**At Dinner**

"How did it go?" asked Ulrich.

Yumi shook her head.

"That bad, huh?"

"She refuses to listen to me, as always."

Odd chuckled, "She refuses to listen to any of us."

"Yeah, so what are we supposed to do? She can't keep going like this, she'll crash sooner or later."

"I'd say that the only thing we could do to make her calm down would be to defeat XANA."

The group exchanged dire expressions.

"Do you think that she'll come down for dinner?"

Ulrich shook his head.

"No chance, I'll take something to her afterwards."

"Thanks, Ulrich," said Jeremie.

"No problem."

**After Dinner**

Aelita was fed up with everyone coming to see her, so the moment that Ulrich knocked on her door she loudly called out to him.

"What do you want?"

"It's me, Princess, I brought you something for dinner."

Aelita's expression softened.

"Thanks, Ulrich."

"Welcome, how is it going?"

"Not bad," she said, continuing to tap keys as she spoke, "I think that I'll be able to target the memory that XANA is occupying directly this time, if it doesn't destroy him, it'll weaken him pretty substantially."

"Nice, so when will you send us in?"

"Just as soon as I can get the access portion working correctly."

"Right," said Ulrich, "I have to get going, plenty of homework to do."

"See you tomorrow," said Aelita.

**Meanwhile, in Jeremie's room**

Jeremie felt strange as he navigated to sites that he had set up previously, hosting backups of all of the code and tools that he had written in the fight against XANA and reinstalled his development environment.

As soon as the installation was completed he opened the window and saw a familiar white page with a blinking cursor marking the position in the code.

He typed in some code experimentally to test his memory of the architecture of Lyoko, testing the code as he went.

When he had confirmed that his memory of the code was sound, he navigated back to his repository and opened the last anti-XANA program that he had been working on before his departure and fiddled with some of the sections.

Hours passed as he made small improvements to the code and by the time he checked the clock it was already past midnight.

_I'd better sleep, I can pick this up again in the morning._


	9. Chapter 9: Cooperation

**The next morning**

Jeremie woke up as he always did, but unlike his routine from the previous six months, he first walked over to his laptop and switched it on before grabbing his shower supplies and working down the hall to the school's communal showers.

Refreshed, Jeremie returned to his room in his clothing for the day and sat down at his desk before typing in his password and booting back into the development environment that allowed him to develop programs for Lyoko.

The last piece of software that Jeremie installed was the most important one, it was a custom SSH client that Franz Hopper had created to allow remote connection to Lyoko.

"_Establishing connection to Lyoko._" said a synthesized female voice.

Jeremie changed windows back to his development environment and opened the document from the night before, making small modifications and transferring the files to the supercomputer as he did.

After 20 minutes of focused work, a sharp knock struck his door.

Jeremie stood from his seat and opened the door.

Behind it stood a very unhappy looking Aelita.

"What are you doing, Jeremie, why are you accessing the supercomputer?"

Before Jeremie had a chance to respond to this, she caught a glimpse of his computer screen and pushed past him to get closer to the screen.

"What is this?" she asked as she read through the code.

"It's a prototype for a multi-agent system, its an idea that's been stuck in my head for a while now."

Aelita forgot all about her anger as she read through the code.

"This... this.. this is good."

Jeremie smiled, "I'm glad that you think so."

"Using a program like XANA to defeat XANA... Aren't you concerned about it achieving sentience like XANA?"

"There's no machine learning component to this one, unlike XANA, but it's hard to tell how it'll turn out."

"Give me a second," said Aelita, quickly standing and leaving.

She returned less that 2 minutes later, carrying Jeremie's old laptop, with the screen displaying a similar environment to the one open on Jeremie's new screen.

"Can I have a copy of this?"

Jeremie quickly transferred the files into a communal directory for Aelita to get a copy.

She opened the file.

"Don't you think that it might be more efficient if you changed this?"

Jeremie, just happy that Aelita's interaction with him didn't involve her shouting, sat himself down beside her on his bed and looked over her shoulder at the modification that she had made.

"That's a good idea," he said.

Aelita seemed happy to be focused on the program, so the two were absorbed into programming until Jeremie's phone vibrated against his desk.

Jeremie stood up and answered it.

"Jeremie?" asked Ulrich over the phone, "Are you coming to breakfast?"

Jeremie looked at the alarm beside his bed and realized that it was 7:40, almost time for breakfast to end and for all students to go to their first classes.

"Yeah, I'll be down in a little while."

"See you soon."

Ulrich hung up.

"We should probably go down to breakfast now, Aelita, classes begin in 20 minutes."

"What's the point?" asked Aelita, waving a hand dismissively as she continued to type with the other, "I'm getting plenty of work done."

"Come on," said Jeremie insistently, "You'll feel better afterwards and we can keep talking about this."

Jeremie and Aelita their first three classes together and they spent the entire time hidden behind textbooks talking to one another about the errata of the multi-agent program, completely ignoring the class content.

The latter half of the day consisted of separate classes, but the two geniuses worked on the program independently and by the end of the school day, they both had a wealth of ideas for modifications to be made to the program.

By the time dinner time had been reached, the two were still sitting in Jeremie's room modifying different parts of the program on their respective computers and talking out loud.

Ulrich knocked.

"Come in, Ulrich," Jeremie said from his chair at the desk.

Ulrich opened the door to a surprising sight of the two working together.

"What's going on?"

"Jeremie and I are modifying a program to help us defeat XANA."

Ulrich paused, "I won't ask for the details, dinner starts in five minutes, are you coming down?"

Aelita put her laptop down on Jeremie's bed.

"I think we've done enough work for now, let's go eat dinner and keep working on it afterwards."

Both Ulrich and Jeremie stared at Aelita with surprised expressions.

"What?" she asked.

"Nothing," said Ulrich quickly, "Anyway, let's go eat."

Jeremie and Aelita kept talking about the multi-agent program through dinner and returned to his room after dinner to keep working on it until Jim came around at 10pm and threw her out.

**8:30pm – Odd and Ulrich's room**

"So yeah, it seems like they're happy to work together." said Ulrich into his phone.

Yumi laughed.

"That's crazy, I'd expect Jeremie to act that way, but not Aelita."

"I'm just glad that Aelita isn't at his throat any more." said Odd, interrupting them.

"Shut it." warned Ulrich.

"Oooh, sorry to you interrupt you," said Odd, "_Lovebirds."_

"I'm warning you, Odd," repeated Ulrich.

Odd chuckled and stood up on his bed.

"ULRICH AND YUMI, SITTING IN A TREE, K-I-S-S-I-N-G."

Ulrich seethed.

"Can I call you back, Yumi? There's something I need to take care of."

**Early the next morning**

Jeremie was sound asleep when is phone rang.

Jeremie slowly opened his eyes.

His alarm clock said that it was 15 minutes to 6 in the morning, and the early pale glow of sunlight was visible through his window.

Jeremie extended a hand from under his duvet and picked up the phone.

The display hurt his eyes, it read "Irina."

Jeremie started slightly at her name and quickly answered the phone.

"Irina? Hi." he said.

"Hello," she said quietly, "Did I wake you?"

"No," he said quickly.

"I'm glad," she said, "How have you been? You haven't called me in a few days."

"Oh... right, sorry, I've been kind of distracted settling back in."

She sounded slightly hurt.

"Have you worked anything more out about coming to see me?"

"Uh... sorry, I haven't really been thinking about it, there are still 6 weeks until the end of the semester, I'm sure that I'll work something out."

"I just miss you," said Irina.

"I miss you too," said Jeremie, "And I'll work something out by next time, I promise."

"Do you have to go?"

"Yes, I've still got a lot of work to unfortunately."

"Okay, I'll talk to you later then."

"Yep, talk to you later."

Jeremie hung up.

He still felt tired, but he willed himself to get up and got out of bed.

As he had the day before, Jeremie turned on his laptop, but couldn't leave his room before 6, so he sat down at his computer desk and opened the version of the multi-agent program that both he and Aelita had been working on the day before.

Jeremie lost himself in the work again, only to be disturbed at 6am when Aelita knocked on his door.

She had her laptop under one arm.

"Morning, shall we get back to work?"

Jeremie smiled.

"Yep, let's do that."


	10. A proposition to you, the community

Hello, fellow members of the Code Lyoko fanfiction community.

I was not sure where I would post something like this (though I'm certain that this is not the right place), but I have an idea that I would like to get opinions (and possibly assistance, if people are willing to) on.

The idea that I'm proposing is to make a Visual Novel-style game set in the Code Lyoko universe, where you play a male main character transferring into Kadic Academy. There will initially be no mention of Lyoko, with focus on bonding with one of the three young ladies who will have routes in the game, they will be Yumi, Aelita and Sissi.

I plan on commissioning as much of the art as possible from an artist well known to myself and perhaps to contribute some of it myself, though I am far from as experienced as the intended artist is.

For the moment, I have a very basic plan of the storyline, but if people would be willing to, I would like members of the community to consider banding together to develop a storyline for the game. The main reason that I'm asking this is that there are many, _many_ people in the community who can express emotion in writing far better than I can, which is something I hope to be included in the game.

As for the engine, I plan to use the Ren'Py engine as it is fairly easy to get into and wouldn't require two years to go into writing an engine specifically for use in this game, or for the purchase of a commercial license.

So please, if you would like to contribute or ask any questions regarding the story so far, please do not hesitate to send me a Private message.

I hope that we can work together and produce something worth playing.

Thankyou,

EAB84


	11. Chapter 10: Complication

Ulrich and Odd both came to get Jeremie at 7am.

"What happened to you?" asked Jeremie as Odd came into view.

Odd's face was swollen in places and he had a conspicuous bruise under his right eye.

"He made a mistake." said Ulrich simply, "Are you two coming down for breakfast?"

Aelita picked up her laptop.

"Yeah, let's work on it at breakfast, Jeremie."

Jeremie stood up from his computer and locked it, then locked the door to his room behind him.

"So how are you two doing?" asked Ulrich, "You seem... more confident, Aelita."

"We've almost got it," said Aelita and Jeremie simultaneously, "Almost."

"Great," said Odd, smiling, "How much longer do you think it'll take you?"

Aelita and Jeremie looked at each other.

"There's no way of telling," said Jeremie, "It could take a few days, it could take a month."

"It all depends on how our calculations work out." finished Aelita.

"When will you know for sure?"

"When we finish the code, unfortunately."

The group entered the cafeteria, collected their food and sat down at their usual table.

"In the meantime, we keep on doing what we've always been doing; fighting XANA."

XANA attacked twice before the code had been finished by Jeremie and Aelita, but the warriors easily repelled him both times.

Jeremie leaned back on his computer chair as he typed the last line of code needed for the multi agent program.

He turned to face Aelita.

"I think that we've done it."

Aelita stood up and leaned past him to read the code.

She remained silent for a long time as she read through the final modifications that Jeremie had made.

She corrected a few mistakes wordlessly before finally stepping back from the computer and smiling at Jeremie.

"I think you're right."

Jeremie exhaled, stepped back from the computer and stood up.

"Let's go and launch the program, the sooner we're rid of XANA, the better."

Jeremie opened the door to his room and almost ran face first into Ulrich.

"Morning, Jeremie," said Ulrich.

Jeremie nodded.

"Morning, princess."

Aelita smiled at Ulrich.

"How's it going?"

"We're done," said Aelita happily, "It's ready."

"That's great!" said Ulrich, "Have you told the others yet?"

Jeremie shook his head.

"We still need to go to the factory and run it, we don't know if it'll work yet."

"What might go wrong?"

Jeremie shook his head.

"The worst part of Hoppix is that it's pretty much impossible to tell if something will go wrong without running the code."

"So... when are you going to run it?"

"As soon as possible, the sooner we are rid of XANA the better."

"And as soon as we can get rid of XANA, we can start looking for my father." added Aelita.

"I take it that you're not coming to breakfast, then?" chuckled Ulrich.

Jeremie smiled.

"Tell Odd not to eat my portion."

Aelita and Jeremie walked into the park, climbed down the manhole and followed the path to the factory, sliding down the ropes in almost perfect sync. The two wordlessly stood in the elevator as it descended and this silence persisted as they worked to prepare the supercomputer to run the program and copied the code into memory.

Jeremie paused with is finger above the return key.

"Are you ready?" he asked.

Aelita turned to face him, "I've been waiting for this day since the moment you found me, what do you think?"

Jeremie smirked.

And pressed the button.

The supercomputer hummed loudly as it attempted to generate the agents for the system.

A number of small, individual windows popped up with analytical messages about the programs, but by the time the tenth window had popped up, the system was slowing substantially and before an eleventh window could appear, the screen went black and the sound of the computer stalled for a second.

Then the computer started to rumble again and the screen reset, with the familiar loading bar in the center.

The supercomputer booted again and returned to the menu, with no sign of the agents on the screen and no sign that XANA had been destroyed.

"What happened?" asked Aelita.

Before Jeremie could open his mouth the Superscan automatically opened and provided the coordinates of a tower.

"I didn't work?" said Jeremie with a dumbfounded expression on his face.

Aelita recovered quickly and took her phone out the pocket of her dress.

"I'll call Yumi, Ulrich and Odd, try and find out more about the attack."

Jeremie nodded and started typing while Aelita held down the first button on her phone.

Yumi's phone cut through the bustle of the cafeteria as Odd loudly consumed Jeremie's potion of breakfast.

"Quiet down," she warned, "Hey, Aelita."

"_Xana attack"_ said Aelita, _"Bring the boys and get to the factory as soon as possible."_

"Okay, see you soon." replied Yumi, hanging up.

Ulrich stopped pushing his food around on the tray and looked at Yumi.

"XANA attack," she mouthed.

Ulrich nodded and clapped Odd on the shoulder.

"Come on, Odd, we've got a world to save."

"Give me a break, I still haven't eaten Aelita's portion yet!"

Ulrich swiped the food off of Odd's tray.

"It'll do her a whole lot more good than it'll do you."

Odd pouted, but stood.

"Fine, but Jeremie better let me have his lunch."

The group ran the same path that Aelita and Jeremie had taken and made it to the factory and were at the factory within 10 minutes.

"From what I can tell, XANA is attempting to attack us, there should be a specter around somewhere but we can't tell what it looks like, yet." said Jeremie.

"So what's the plan?" asked Ulrich.

"I'd prefer if one of you stayed here, as we all know about how I do with fighting," he said, looking rueful, "And Aelita will be going to Lyoko, so that she's relatively safe."

No one put their hand up to volunteer to stay on earth, each of the preferring to be on Lyoko, where the action was.

Odd raised his hand.

"I'll stay, I ate your breakfast, after all."

"You what!?" asked Jeremie.

"I no longer wish to volunteer."

Jeremie placed his hand over his face.

"Look, we'll worry about that later, right now, the rest of you need to get to Lyoko. Good luck."

Aelita, Yumi and Ulrich nodded and walked towards the elevator, while Jeremie turned back to the computer and Odd sat down at the edge of the Holomap, looking bored.

The three were virtualized quickly and landed on the desert sector. Jeremie spawned in their vehicles and directed them towards the activated tower, which they reached quickly.

The tower was surrounded near the top by a ring of hornets and surrounded at the base by outward facing tarantuala.

"XANA's pulled out all the stops this time," commented Yumi, "But it doesn't look like they've noticed us yet."

As soon as the last word left her mouth a tarantula's laser was fired over her head, narrowly missing her.

"Never mind,"

"I'll take the tarantulas, try and take out a few of the hornets," said Ulrich, in command, "Aelita, help Yumi."

The girls nodded and Yumi drew her fans.

Ulrich sprinted out of cover and scored the XANA symbols on the heads of the two nearest tarantulas before sprinting back to cover.

**On Earth**

The elevator rumbled as it descended.

Jeremie turned around in his chair.

"That must be the specter!"

"Finally," mumbled Odd, standing up and walking over to block the specter's path to Jeremie.

The doors opened into the laboratory, but the elevator was empty.

Odd threw his arms up into the air.

"What am I supposed to do now?"

He stepped forward into the elevator and looked around, studying the walls and the roof. A soft crackle of electricity sounded.

Odd was knocked off of his feet as a specter dived out of one of walls and tackled him to the ground. The specter himself was unfamiliar to the Lyoko Warriors, he was a heavy-set man wearing a pair of very dark green coveralls with a tool belt around his broad waist.

"Guys," said Jeremie with some urgency, "The specter's arrived, try to wrap it up as fast as you can."

"Working on it, Jeremie," replied Ulrich, the strain audible in his voice.

**On Lyoko**

"Let's wrap this up," said Yumi, throwing one of her fans.

It arced through the air and gashed the mark of XANA on one of the two surviving tarantula's faces before returning to her hand. Aelita jumped onto the edge of the cover that they were behind and threw an energy field towards the tarantula, which it dodged by skittering sideways. Ulrich used the distraction to sprint forward again and slice its forelegs off before striking the mark of XANA.

"It's all taken care of, get to the tower, Aelita."

Aelita ran to the tower and deactivated it before returning to the group.

"Shall we run a return to the past?"

"It doesn't look like there's any damage in the real world and Odd seems to be doing fine."

"Screw you too," said Odd from his prone position on the ground.

"In all seriousness, are you okay?"

"Let's see."

Odd stood up.

"Yep, nothing broken."

Jeremie ignored him and spoke into the microphone.

"I'll bring you back in, then we'll find out what's going on with the program."


	12. Chapter 11

"There just isn't enough memory in the Supercomputer to run the program." said Jeremie.

"Can't you just attach other things that have more memory in them? That's what we did when we had to rescue you from the Supercomputer."

Jeremie shook his head.

"It's not that simple, I don't only need a few kilobytes of memory."

"How much more do we need?" asked Yumi.

"A terabyte, maybe more."

Aelita's eyes widened.

"What's a terabyte?" asked Ulrich.

"A lot," said Jeremie simply, "Way more than we can get."

"So what are we supposed to do?" asked Aelita, sitting down hopelessly, "How are we supposed to make up that much memory?"

"We'll need to go back over the code and simplify it, make it use less memory."

"What are we going to do in the mean time?"

Jeremie grimaced.

"What we always do, we'll have to keep fighting XANA while Aelita and I work on this code."

"And how long will it take you?" asked Ulrich.

"No clue," said Jeremie, with a hint of hopelessness, "It'll take a lot of work, how long it takes depends on how Aelita and I choose to spend the time."

Jeremie turned to face Aelita.

"If we skip all of our classes, we may be able to get it done in a month."

The rest of the warriors looked dumbfounded.

"That long?"

"If we skipped sleeping we could probably get it done in two weeks."

"NO!" interrupted Aelita loudly, "I won't have you skipping any more sleep."

Jeremie smirked and gently tapped Aelita on the end of the nose.

"I won't let you lose any more either."

The rest of the Lyoko Warriors watched this exchange wordlessly.

"You two are totally in love with each other." said Odd, loudly.

"What?" asked Jeremie, "How did you get that from _that_ exchange?"

Odd gave the pair a suggestive look.

"Don't you worry about that."

Jeremie sighed.

"Odd, that doesn't even make sense."

Odd's expression faltered.

"Anyway," said Jeremie, "The point I'm _trying_ to make is that it will be a lot of work, and that it will take a long time."

"Right," said Ulrich, "So we keep doing what we usually do."

"And we get to work," said Jeremie, "Can you tell Jim that Aelita and I are ill in the infirmary? We'll get started on this and we'll come down at dinner and tell you how we're going."

Ulrich nodded.

"Sure thing, see you guys later."

The Lyoko warriors left Jeremie's room, leaving the pair of geniuses to work on the code.

The two worked in relative silence, only chatting occasionally about the program and hiding a few times to avoid the occasional teacher patrolling the halls and checking the rooms.

After 3 hours of continual work, Jeremie called for a break and slid his glasses off his head before wiping his eyes.

The two stood and took some short walks in the corridor to stretch their legs, chattering aimlessly all the while. As the moved to sit down again, Jeremie stopped Aelita.

"Aelita, I just want to say... I'm sorry for moving away like I did."

Aelita's expression fell, as if she were just remembering the way that she felt after he returned.

"I abandoned all of you to fight against that _monster_." choked Jeremie, losing his composure, "And I never realized how much I hurt you."

The first few tears ran out of both of their eyes simultaneously.

"But how stupid is that?" asked Jeremie, sobbing as he did, "That I didn't even know."

Aelita didn't say anything, but she started sobbing.

Neither of them made any move to comfort one another, they stood together, sobbing and wiping their eyes as they both reflected on their feelings.

Aelita opened her mouth once the worst of her tears had passed.

"When you left I felt... betrayed." she said, "I got so angry at you."

Jeremie nodded.

"And, over time," she continued, "That anger turned into bitterness."

Jeremie couldn't think of anything to say, so he nodded again.

"I managed to shut most of my emotions out, but when you came back it all came flooding out. I _hated _you for leaving, and I think that I was planning not to forgive you."

"Aelit-" Jeremie began.

"But," Aelita interrupted, "I think that you've done enough over the past few weeks to show that you deserve a second chance."

Aelita went quiet, seemingly finished.

"That seems fair." Jeremie said.

Jeremie picked up the box of tissues from his computer desk and offered one to Aelita. Aelita took one and Jeremie took one himself. The both wiped their own eyes and returned to their previous positions.

They returned to work.

The rest of the day proceeded without incident and the pair had made some headway by the time they walked down to attend dinner. The pair had not eaten since breakfast and, even then, they hadn't eaten a proper breakfast at school. Jeremie and Aelita collected their trays from Rosa and sat down at their usual table to wait for the rest of the group, continuing to talk about the program until the group arrived.

"How did it go?" asked Ulrich as he sat down next to Jeremie, "Have you two made any progress?"

"Some," said Jeremie, "We're working at the rate that I expected we would."

"So it's going to take a month, then?"

Jeremie and Aelita both nodded.

"Looks like it."

"Darn,"

"We can't rush this," said Jeremie as Odd joined them at the table, "It's too much of a risk."

"Rush it?" asked Odd incredulously, "It's already going to take a month."

Jeremie waved a hand dismissively.

"A month isn't that long, it took me almost a year to perfect Aelita's materialization."

"Yeah, we remember."

Jeremie looked frustrated, but Ulrich interrupted him before he could say anything to Odd.

"So it's going to take a month, huh? I guess we'll just keep on fighting in the meantime."

Jeremie nodded.

"Same as always, we stop XANA and we keep working. We'll beat him one day, and with any luck that one day will be soon."

Jeremie looked around, but nobody had anything more to add, so he picked up his fork and kept eating dinner.


End file.
